The hours-old baby boy was rescued from a dumpster by his unknowing father, who only realized the child was his after recognizing the trash inside the garbage bag.

The infant, who is believed to have been delivered into a toilet, was alive even though his mother allegedly cut his umbilical cord with tweezers.

One year after the boy was found in a Calgary housing complex, the woman is accused of killing two other babies whose bodies have never been recovered.

Meredith Katharine Borowiec, 30, who lives in the city’s northwest, now faces two second-degree murder charges as well as the attempted murder charge police laid last week after what one sergeant called a “very stressful, long investigation.”

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The investigation began Oct. 19, 2010, the day police say Ms. Borowiec delivered a six-pound boy alone in her apartment, before placing the baby and a towel into the bathroom garbage.

Court documents obtained by the Calgary Herald paint a disturbing picture of her actions: After transferring the boy into a larger kitchen bag filled with other refuse, then dumping the child in the dumpster, Ms. Borowiec smoked a cigarette and watched television.

It was not until two men found the baby moving in the bin that she emerged from the apartment and sat on the steps in blood-covered pants, says the police application for a search warrant.

In a twist, one of those men was the boy’s father — a man who says he never knew his girlfriend was pregnant.

Ms. Borowiec told police the baby was quiet and still when he was born. She said she did not know she was pregnant, although she said she had once been six months’ pregnant and miscarried in 2009.

Caroline Bartel, president of the Cambrian Heights Community Association covering the 40th Avenue Northwest housing complex, said the two-lane street is “not very remarkable” and the Queen’s Park Village complex is home to mostly low-income families and newcomers to Canada.

“It was a very sad event, and people wished they had known what was going on so they could’ve helped in some way,” Ms. Bartel said.

Debra Price, a lawyer with an office near Queen’s Park Village who did not know Ms. Borowiec, called the community a “nice, quiet neighbourhood,” but said, “It’s always surprising when this happens — it doesn’t matter where it happens.”

The story gained international attention when it was covered by Fox News. It also captured the attention of Canadians across the country.

Announcing the second-degree murder charges against Ms. Borowiec Tuesday afternoon, Sergeant Kelly Campbell of the Child Abuse Unit acknowledged it would be “difficult” but “not impossible” to proceed with the prosecution without the bodies of the other two alleged victims.

Witnesses suggested Ms. Borowiec had given birth to two other babies, she said, adding it would “be highly unlikely to recover the bodies due to the length of time and not knowing where these bodies are.”

Sgt. Campbell would not say whether Ms. Borowiec had admitted to the alleged 2008 and 2009 killings, saying only the woman “has been co-operative through the investigation.”

The day after he rescued his son, the boy’s father — who cannot be named to protect the baby’s identity — said he had received a call from a friend of Ms. Borowiec’s saying she suspected the 2010 alleged abandonment was not her first.

“A long time has passed on, and this has rehashed a lot of things,” he said last week.

Unlike other mothers who abandoned their children, Ms. Borowiec is facing murder charges rather than infanticide — when a mother through a “wilful act or omission” causes the death of a newborn under 12 months because “her mind was disturbed” as result of childbirth or nursing.

This year, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld infanticide as a defence, refusing to hear the Crown’s appeal in the case of an Ontario woman who had been found guilty of infanticide for killing two of her babies.

In September, a 19-year-old Edmonton woman received a three-year suspended sentence for strangling her newborn son and tossing the body over her backyard fence in 2005.

She was twice convicted of second-degree murder by two separate juries, but the convictions were overturned on appeal.

The charges against Ms. Borowiec come just months after the first infant was left at Canada’s first and only safe drop-off, where parents can safely abandon unwanted children.

The safe-haven concept, which was pioneered in Canada at Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital, is lauded for protecting the most vulnerable — and condemned for normalizing abandonment.

The “Angel’s Cradle” concept is now under consideration in Alberta, where a Roman Catholic organization called Covenant Health is working to launch a safe haven in Edmonton.

“When I hear a story like this, I wonder whether we’ve done everything we can to make sure these people don’t fall through the cracks,” said Gordon Self, Covenant’s vice-president of mission, ethics and spirituality.

“We think of the poor, vulnerable baby left all alone in an unsafe environment, but I also think of the parents who are equally vulnerable and may feel they have nowhere to turn.”

In addition to the attempted murder charge in the October 2010 case, Ms. Borowiec is also charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm, child abandonment and failure to provide the necessities of life for a child under 16.